


Perchance to Dream

by dsa_archivist



Category: due South
Genre: Drama, Episode Related, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2000-03-24
Updated: 2000-03-24
Packaged: 2018-11-10 06:01:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11121330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsa_archivist/pseuds/dsa_archivist
Summary: Note from Speranza, the archivist: this story was once archived atDue South Archive. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I tried to reach out to all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address onDue South Archive collection profile.





	Perchance to Dream

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Speranza, the archivist: this story was once archived at [Due South Archive](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Due_South_Archive). To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I tried to reach out to all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Due South Archive collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/duesoutharchive).

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Title: Perchance to Dream  
Author: AJ Dannehl  
Rating: PG  
Pairing: None  
Setting: Post COTW  
Spoiler: COTW  
Disclaimer: Alliance owns the copyrights to Due South, its characters  
and situations; i own only this plot; yada yada yada...  
  
  
*****  
  
  
 _I am running, running frantically in the dark. The only light comes_  
from strobe flashes of red that pop off first here, then there. It disorients  
me, makes it hard to know which way to go. No matter how fast I run I  
barely gain any ground. This darkness is like a living thing; it reaches,  
grasps at me, wraps itself around me. I am running through it, struggling  
against it, my breath ragged, wheezing. My legs are at the point of collapse;  
it is tempting to give up, to fall into the darkness and surrender, but  
I can't stop. Can't stop; I have to push through the red-lit darkness,  
get to Muldoon.  
  
Get to Muldoon before the arms dealer hurts Benny.  
  
Just up ahead... Gunshots. Screams. More shots; now I see gunpowder flashes.  
I have to keep running. Almost there. I've come too far, been gone too  
long, only to have Benny taken away from me now.  
  
I see Muldoon spotlighted in front of a toy store. He holds a weapon  
in the classic two-handed firing position, his back to me. Now I see  
Benny, standing straight as a firing-range target. Muldoon, intent on  
the bright red target, doesn't know I am near. Benny speaks but I can't  
hear him; my heart beat drowns out all other sounds. Just a little closer  
now... Almost there...  
  
Benny sees me, spots me inching towards Muldoon. Benny smiles, waves  
and calls to me. Now I can hear the words: they're my name. Benny shouts  
my name over and over and waves at me.  
  
Muldoon swirls around, takes aim at me and fires. I can hear the shots,  
am blinded by the gunpowder flashes.  
  
The world changes.  
  
Wind screams at me now. It howls, wails, sounds like a wolf. I turn,  
look everywhere, but all I can see is white. Shining, blazing white,  
and cold. Snow. I know I'm in a snow field, somewhere. I know where I  
am: I'm in Canada. I can't see; the dazzle of sun on snow burns my eyes,  
blinds me. I can't move; snow like quicksand pulls at me, slows me down.  
Snow swirls madly like flakes in a shaken snowglobe. The crystal flakes  
have razor-keen edges. They sting me, cut my face and bare hands. I hold  
my hands in front of my eyes and lean into the wolf wind and free myself  
from the snow bank. Bright red crystals fall from my hands, marking my  
path through the snow. After a while I see a shape, dark against the  
whiteness, coming towards me. The shape becomes a man, a man holding  
a gun. I can see the barrel, shining through the stinging snow. The  
barrel is pointed at me. I see the gunman clearly now and call out to  
him.  
  
"Benny!"  
  
Benny is still in his dress reds. Diefenbaker comes from out of nowhere  
and stands by his side. Benny laughs, Dief howls. The two sounds mix  
together, mix with the screaming winds and swirling snow. The gun is  
still pointed at me; I can see Benny's finger slowly squeezing the trigger.  
  
"Benny! It's me! It's Ray!" I scream at him over the wind.  
Benny's finger, still on the trigger, tightens again. "Benny! It's  
Ray Vecchio! I've come back!" Benny's mouth opens, moves, but all  
I can hear is howling wolf laughter and wind and my own heart thudding  
and thudding and thudding. Benny's arm drops to his side, the gun dangling  
loose. He laughs.  
  
I've never been this scared before in my life.  
  
Then Dief runs towards me, snarling, fangs bared. The wolf leaps as I  
yell his name, yell Benny's name; I throw my hands up defensively. I  
hear Benny's laughter as Dief hits my chest, slamming me into the snow.  
I can't breathe, both hitting the ground and from the wolf's weight upon  
my chest. Dief is growling and I can feel his breath on my hands, my  
face. A wind-sharp whistle from Benny and Dief leaps off, returning to  
Benny's side.  
  
I push myself up, try to get back on my feet. As I stand a flash catches  
my eye. It's light, bouncing off the gun barrel as Benny whips the weapon  
up and aims it at me again. I see gunpowder flashes, hear the reports.  
Round after round slams into me, sends me jerking and spinning in the  
snow. Bright red blood arches gracefully from wherever a bullet strikes,  
making delicate, feathery swirls in the snow.  
  
I collapse like an abandoned toy, no longer needed or wanted.  
  
Everything grows hazy, grows dark red. I hear footsteps crunching in  
the snow, coming towards me. The steps pace in time with my heartbeat,  
growing slower and slower and slower. I look up, barely see Benny through  
the red haze. Benny bends over me, says something to me. Again, I can  
hear the words..."Too late, buddy. You're just too damn late."  
Then, carefully, Benny raises the gun and aims it at my face, only inches  
away from my eyes, and squeezes the trigger one more time....  
  
  
  
*****  
Ray sat up in bed, eyes wild, breath ragged, sweat drenching his body.  
He looked at the clock's glowing digital numbers: 4:05 a.m. God, that  
dream. It was always the same, night after night. Sometimes, two or three  
times in a night.  
  
"To sleep, perchance to dream..." he remembered that from Sister  
Helen's twelfth grade English class. Shakespeare. Who was it? Hamlet,  
yeah... wasn't Hamlet thinking about killing himself? In high school,  
Ray really hadn't gotten the point: life being so bad that you wanted  
to kill yourself, but you were scared you'd have bad dreams for eternity?  
Get real.  
  
It had gotten terribly real for Ray Vecchio.  
  
He spent tons of time with the shrinks since coming back. The P.D.'s,  
the F.B.I.'s, almost any kind of governmental agency that had been involved  
with this assignment and that had social workers and psychologists and  
counselors and psychiatrists. The shrinks looked at him, encouraged him  
to talk, to express his feelings. So, he did. Then they told him that  
what he felt, thought, feared, was all _normal_ , all healthy, after  
what he'd been through. Then they listened some more, then looked at  
clocks or watches and told him that he was making excellent progress,  
all things considered.  
  
All things considered?  
  
Did they mean, considering the fact that he hadn't eaten his service  
weapon yet?  
  
He buried his head in his hands, fighting to calm down, to control himself.  
They -- all of them, the doctors, the lawyers, the Feds, all the ones  
who made these decisions -- hadn't considered _one damn thing_ about  
this assignment except busting the Iguanas. Nobody considered the effect  
of being suddenly pulled away from his family, his friends, his life  
itself, and knowing that the chances for recovering any of them slim.  
Nobody considered the strain of being on guard every day, every damn  
 _day_ and night, of having to think like a criminal, to be a criminal  
himself, in order to do the damn job and stay alive, aware that any move  
he made, everything he said or looked at or laughed at or even got upset  
about, could possibly get him killed. Not any goddamn one of them considered  
any of this, damn them all to hell.  
  
OK. He _had_ been given what they called orientation. Continual  
drill upon the names, the faces, the facts, the figures. Told him that  
yeah, this could happen, that might happen, and if it did, well, chalk  
it up to the wreck and tell anyone who might notice, hey, I'm lucky to  
be alive, much less functioning, so don't sweat the small stuff, right?  
The Bookman was back, baby, and ready for action! Who do we whack today,  
guys?  
  
Sweet dreams ain't made of these.  
  
Ray wrapped his arms around himself tightly, chilled from the sweat...and  
other reasons. He drew a ragged, shuddering breath and stared at what  
scattered moonlight showed: his bedroom, in his house; once a familiar,  
comfortable place. His bed. His dresser. His stuff. His space. His place?  
  
He was no longer sure where his place was.  
  
A problem, that: where, exactly, _did_ Ray Vecchio belong? No way  
he could go back undercover, even if he wanted to (and he sure as _hell  
_ didn't want to). Nope; Armondo Langoustini might have had nine lives,  
but the last eight were used up trying to get Muldoon and Cyrus Bolt.  
No more miraculous survival stories could be written for the Bookman.  
  
Any miracles left for Ray Vecchio?  
  
Hell, any _life_ left?  
  
Ray's life, it seemed, had gotten along quite nicely without him, thank  
you very much. The earth didn't stop revolving, the sun still rose and  
set each day, Chicago didn't disappear off the face of the map even with  
him gone. His family was fine, the house had been tourched but rebuilt  
even better than it was. The 27th still battled crime and criminals and  
showed a pretty good arrest record, too. The guy they brought in to keep  
his cover going, Kowalski, was a good cop, a good guy. Must be; Fraser  
worked with him, liked him, trusted him. The guy did a good job with  
Ray's life, Ray's career. Probably better than when Ray lived it himself.  
  
Sure seemed like everyone else thought so.  
  
OK. That was self-pity, pure and simple. Maybe he was wrong, about Fraser,  
about everybody. Maybe he wasn't being fair, especially about the Mountie.  
  
Life, as they say, ain't fair. Then why did he have to fair? Why _should_  
he?  
  
Because of Benny.  
  
Because Benny thought he could be. Because Benny had always believed  
in Ray Vecchio and trusted Ray Vecchio and knew that, come what may,  
despite all the bitching and whining, Ray Vecchio would do the right  
thing.  
  
Then where the hell was Benny?  
  
It wasn't Ray's fault that he left like he did. The Feds said they'd  
do stuff to his family, to his mother... his mother, for Christ's sake.  
They had stuff, evidence, papers and shit, connecting Pop to the Mob.  
Said they'd make it look like Ma knew about the criminal activites, make  
life for all the Vecchios a living hell. God, what else could he do?  
Nothing.           
  
Not one damn thing.  
  
He'd fought like hell to make even that one lousy call. All the Feds  
nearly had a heart attack when Ray told 'em he was gonna make the call  
anyway, no matter what they said or did.  
  
So he'd made his call... and found that there wasn't a whole lot he could  
say. What could he say? Nothing. Not over a phone or any other way. It  
was too dangerous, he knew that. Too dangerous for him. For Benny, too,  
if only Benny thought about it. That's why he couldn't get in touch with  
Benny at all, except for that one lousy postcard. If anyone had even  
got a whiff, just a hint, of the possibility that the Mountie knew more  
than he was letting on, well, God alone knows what would have happened.  
  
Make that God, the Mob, and Armondo, the man formerly known as Detective  
Ray Vecchio. Ray knew exactly what would have happened, 'cause he'd seen  
it done to someone else and that person's friend. Just thinking about  
it made his skin crawl. Dear God, the screams...and the blood...  
  
No way he could let that happen to Benny.  
  
Benny seemed happy enough when he first saw Ray at the Hotel California.  
That goofy smile, and those blue eyes shining like a kid at Christmas.  
Trust Benny to be himself and nearly get them all killed with honesty.  
Trust Benny again to trust _Ray_ enough to follow his lead and get  
them out of it. And trust Benny again to say that Ray and Kowalski would  
get along fine. Who wouldn't take a bullet, again, for a friend like  
that? Absently mindedly, he rubbed the scars. They still hurt, sometimes.  
Benny and he sure had scarred each other up quite a bit, inside and out.  
  
Maybe Benny's scars still hurt, too.  
  
Ray knew, none better, that Benton Fraser was no plaster saint. Fraser'd  
admitted to feeling a bit of satisfaction the first time Ray'd caught  
a bullet meant for the Mountie. Ray could only wonder if, maybe, Fraser  
might've felt the same this second time. Ray would never know for sure,  
because Benny and he weren't able to talk just then. Hell, there'd been  
no _time_ to talk, to explain and to listen, to understand and be  
understood. He'd been so damned overwhelmed, returning like that, seeing  
Benny and everyone at the precint, but still having to concentrate on  
finishing the damn job. No time to reconnect, to make things right. So  
much was left unresolved. Was _that_ why Benny took off to the  
armpit of the frozen north... with Kowalski?  
  
"A hit; a most palatable hit...They bleed on both sides."  
  
Sighing, Ray looked at the clock. 4:45. He settled back against his pillow  
and rubbed his eyes so hard that he could see white sparks behind his  
eyelids. He pulled the dark green comforter up and clutched it like a  
life-line. Forget sleep, 'cause it was too late. Ignore the dreams...  
if he could. Forget that he was going back to a life not really his anymore.  
Ignore the fact that everyone still seemed a bit uncomfortable around  
him, didn't seem to know what to do around him. Forget that the best  
friend he ever had in his life wasn't there for him anymore.  
  
He only had himself, now.  
  
Maybe his old man had been right; just worry about number one. But when  
the hell had his old man every been right about anything? And how the  
hell long had it been since _he,_ himself, been right, or even knew  
what _was_ right? Ray no longer knew anymore.  
  
He no longer got a full night's sleep.  
  
He no longer knew who or what he was.  
  
He no longer kept his service weapon loaded or so near in his nightstand.  
  
  
  
  
          
 __  
  
  



End file.
